XPostitPlus 2.2 - formerly known as Xpostit 2.2
by Michael J. Hammel
Naming Convention
-----------------
Throughout this document and all other files in this distribution, the
terms "XPostitPlus", "xpostit+", and "xpostit" all refer to the same
program. "XPostitPlus" is the generic name, "xpostit+" is the binary created,
and "xpostit" is the historic name.
History
-------
This version of xpostit is based on David A. Curry's original version.
When I was getting ready to release this version I went and checked out the
R5Contrib tree at ftp.x.org and found a version "3.3.1" from David dated
1991. Thats sometime after I got hold of a copy. The version that I'm
releasing is based on his 1.2 version from 1990. Since the trees have
diverged a bit I guess I should give this another name. From now on, my
tree will be called "XPostitPlus". The version numbering will stay the same
(2.2) from here on, though. For practicality sake, I'm not going to bother
to change every reference of "xpostit" in the README, docs, or source to
"XPostitPlus". I'll just name the distribution differently so as not to
confuse the two trees. I checked with David on this and he agreed that
changing the name was sufficient as long as I made the following
disclaimer:
XPostitPlus is not supported by David Curry in any way. All bug reports,
patches, etc, should be sent to me, Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@csn.net)
and not to David!
About XPostitPlus
-----------------
And you thought there was no real way to clutter your desktop.
BWahahahaha! Welcome to XPostit 2.2!
I tried to follow the principle of "KISS" - Keep It Simple, Stupid - so
many of XPostitPlus's features make use of features already available on the
system, such as "mail" or "lpr".
It was built on Slackware 2.1 with a 1.1.78 Linux kernel but has been built
and tested on a number of systems (see below). A few new features
have been added since David's version and some have been modified:
Version 2.1 (released to tsx11.mit.edu, but not many other places):
1. Hidden notes
Instead of having lots of notes scattered all over the screen you can
hide notes and bring them up only when you need them.
2. Names for notes
This is useful for identifying hidden notes as well as providing
visible notes with a title.
3. Note Options menu instead of buttons
This was necessary since the buttons got bigger than the width
of the smaller notes.
4. The notes now set the sensitivy of the Save option when the note has
been changed
Version 2.2 (a much wider release)
1. Relative positioning of notes was added. This permits XPostitPlus to
determine when the screen size has changed on consecutive invokations.
If the screen size is smaller than the previous invokation, the location of
a note is scaled to fit the new screen size.
From Hal DeVore @ BMC Software, Houston (hdevore@erehwon.bmc.com).
2. Jim Spath (jspath@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us) suggested that the magic cookie be
changed from %! to %%!! since the original cookie is the one used by
Postscript. I added code to handle this and added the -c flag which will
allow you to read in old notes. If you use this flag once, then use "Save
All Notes" all your old notes will have the new cookie. Or you can just
let the auto-save feature do that for you. The -c option will only allow
you to read the old format, it will always write the new format.
Note: if you add the following line to your magic file you wil now
be able to recognize XPositPlus files using the "file" command:
0 string %%!! X-Post-It-Note text
NOTE: compatibility in this version refers to compatibility with notes
created with my previous release of xpostit 2.1, not with any of David's
releases after 1.2! In other words, his 3.3.1 notes may not work with
this versions compatibility flag.
3. "Unhide All Notes" option added - all notes that have been hidden can
be brought up all at once now.
4. Auto Save feature implemented. I just needed to learn a little about
timers, which with X is suprisingly simple (the code worked the first
time!). This can be disabled with the -ns command line option.
Feature suggested by Terry Brown.
5. Added -help and -? command line options which provide a usage statement.
6. Changed Name dialog popup to display current note name.
7. Changed Name dialog to resize to a reasonable size, allowing room to
insert more text. This is a big hack, because the Athena widgets don't
allow you to determine the width, in pixels, of the font being used.
I had to add the -nw command line option (or .nameWidth resource)
to allow the user to specify the number of pixels. It defaults to
10, which is pretty reasonable given the fonts being used.
8. Added Cascade feature. Each note can be "anchored". If one or more
notes are anchored and the "Cascade" option is chosen from the plaid
menu, then all the visible notes are cascaded onto the anchored notes. An
attempt is made to distribute all visible notes evenly amongst all the
anchored notes. Each note also has an "unanchor" option as well. Only
one of "anchor" or "unanchor" is sensitive for any given note.
Hidden notes are not affected by the cascade feature. The default
offset for cascaded notes (from the anchor) is 15 pixels. This can be
changed with the -ao option or the .anchorOffset resource.
9. Fixed the message about a null child being managed, I think.
10. Added a Print option. The command to use for printing is system
dependent and can be specified with either the .printCmd resource or
with the -printcmd command line option. By default, "lpr %s" is used.
Note that the command uses the varargs format used by printf. "%s"
is necessary because this will be the name of a temporary file for a
given note. Notes with no text in them will not be printed (an error
message will be popped up stating so).
11. Rearranged the Options menu a little, so it makes a little more sense.
Added divider lines to the plaid menu as well.
12. Error dialog box wasn't being created even though it was possible for
it to be requested to be popped up. This was fixed, and the Error
dialog box was cleaned up for general use.
13. Alarms have been added. By selecting "Set Alarm" from a notes Options
menu, the user can set an alarm for that note. When the alarm goes off
a beep is heard (via XBell()) and a window pops up stating which
notes alarm just went off. Only the title of the note is given, so you
should make sure your notes have proper names (using the Name option).
Alarms can be disabled completely with the -na option or .noAlarm
resource. Since the timer for checking alarms runs once a minute, if
a user has alot of notes or a slow machine it might be advantagous to
turn off this feature (I guess).
14. Added the ability to insert the current calendar month into a note
at the current cursor location. This is done via a notes "Insert
Calendar" menu option.
15. If you "lose" a note and want to bring it up at the cursor, select
"Find A Note" from the plaid menu. A pop up window of all notes will
be presented. Select the note you want and if its not hidden it will
pop up at the cursor. If it is hidden it will pop up in the appropriate
spot.
16. Notes can now be emailed. The "Email" option from the notes menu will
pop up a window prompting for an email address. The -emailcmd command
line option or .emailCmd resource can be set to your systems mailer
command. The mailer must accept the text of the mail via standard
input (actually as a pipe from "cat tmpfile"). The Unix "mail" command
is the default value for this. See the man page for details.
17. Added a rule for converting the Xpostit.ad into an include file so it
could be used as fallback resources (via th ad2c script, which has been
included in the source package). In this way the Xpostit.ad does not
have to be installed into the app-defaults directory.
18. Changed the Hidden Notes pop up menu to be a pop up shell widget, so
it can be moved around the screen. This is consistant with the new
"Find A Note" pop up window, too.
19. Added better error handling, so if you try to do a function that can't
be done XPostitPlus should tell you now.
Systems XPostitPlus is known to build and function on:
------------------------------------------------------
Linux 1.1.78 (Slackware 2.1) or later
linux-1.3.64, XFree-3.1.2, gcc-2.7.2 ELF
SunOS 4.1.3
SunOS 4.3.1
Solaris 2.4
FreeBSD 2.0.5 (it will probably work just fine on 2.1.0 as well)
NetBSD 1.1
BSDI BSD/OS (version unknown) - I ran xpostit 2.1 on one of these, but
don't have access to it anymore. I don't suspect 2.2 broke any
compatibility.
Xpostit should work with any R5 or R6 release of X11. It may work on R4,
since it was originally written for R4, but I haven't tried it on one of
those systems in a few years. Of course, if you're still using R4 you
probably also have a large collection of BetaMax and 8-Track tapes. To
each his own.
I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who tries this on a different OS.
See my email address at the end of this README file.
Support issues
--------------
I'll support this as long as you provide a list of what you did in order to
reproduce a particular problem. Read the man page first, though. The code
is fairly simple. If you're not familiar with X, this probably
isn't a bad way to get started.
I don't particularly like the style of the code, but I didn't clean it up,
I just added the features (along the style of the original source). Its
not bad, its just not how I would have done it. :-)
To Build:
---------
1. If you
a. don't use a window manager (who are you and what planet did you
come from?)
b. you don't have an ICCCM compliant window manager (get one)
c. you use a feature of your window manager which causes transients to
not use the window managers title bar for a window.
Then
edit Imakefile and uncomment the DEFINE statement:
DEFINE = -DNOWM
If you define this then a title bar is created in the individual
note windows.
If you don't do this (which is what most people will choose to do) then
the titles for individual notes will be placed (if possible) in the title
bar of the window manager frame for that note. This is handy for things
like the fvwm window list, since the names of the windows are taken from
their title bars.
2. If you still use <sys/dir.h>, then edit Imakefile and uncomment the
DEFINE statement:
DEFINE = -DUSE_DIR
I think this is mostly outdated, but there may be some systems that
still use it. Linux just points sys/dir.h to dirent.h.
3. run "xmkmf" - this creates the Makefile
4. run "make depend" - this will force the recreatation of app_defaults.h
if you change Xpostit.ad, so you don't have to install the Xpostit.ad
file if you don't want to. If you want to ensure that this gets done
properly, make sure app_defaults.h does not exist before doing either
this or the next step.
5. run "make"
If app_defaults.h doesn't get built automatically you should be able to
run "make app_defaults.h" before you run "make".
If you don't have xmkmf you can try hacking the Makefile.Linux, but I
haven't a clue how much work this involves. If your willing to do this
you're probably better off trying to find xmkmf, imake and the config files
necessary for your particular flavor of Unix. Or maybe you could hack up a
GNU autoconf configuration. Good luck. :-)
Note: Makefile.Linux is a Makefile built on my Linux box and should run on
any Linux box built after Linux 1.1.78. And probably lots that were built
before that, too. :-)
Things to do:
------------------
1. File Open
2. File Save
I could have done these, but I got anxious to get this release out of the way
so I could get back to other projects I'm working on. These will be in
the next release of XPostitPlus, whenever that might be.
3. save "backup" notes, in case a write to a note fails during system crash
4. rubber banding placement: make sure windows are completely in view on
visible screen.
5. change SaveNote() to only save the note if the notes status has changed in
any way.
6. change save on exit: if "on", save changed notes silently; if "off",
prompt for saving.
Legal Mumbo Jumbo
------------------
From David's Version 3.3.1 version of xpostit (which is not the version
from which my version has evolved, BTW):
Copyright 1991 by David A. Curry
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its
documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that
the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright
notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. The
author makes no representations about the suitability of this software for
any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
I've never contacted David about this software, so I can't say exactly what
the copyright is. Since David released the code for general use, I'll just
say that you can use the software for non-commercial use in any way you see
fit as long as any modification you make are not redistributed without first
contacting me about them. I only make this provision so I don't get
swamped with email about someone else's version for which I have no
knowledge or control over. If you'd like to make a commercial version of
this software, contact me. I just want to make sure I get a copy of any
future releases (and that I get a little credit for having done some work
on this). :-)
If you wish to include it on a CD-ROM (or in any other media) of
freely-available software you may do so as long as the source is also
distributed in its original form and any compiled versions you make are clearly
marked as yours. Again, I just do this to make sure I don't end up
supporting someone elses work.
I think this is basically what the GNU CopyLeft says, isn't it? Dammit
Jim! I'm an engineer, not a lawyer!
Michael J. Hammel
mjhammel@csn.net
Last updated: 04/03/96